Konrad Adenauer

"History is the sum total of things that could have been avoided."

Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer, German Chancellor from 1949 - 1963, was the oldest democratically elected leader in world history. He was 73 at the time of his election.

In 1917, during World War I, he was mayor of Cologne, an office he lost when Adolf Hitler rose to power in 1933. Persecuted for his criticism of the new regime, he was imprisoned in 1944 (some sources say he was in fact sent to a concentration camp), but was restored to his former office at the end of World War II. (Interestingly, he was restored to the position by U.S. military authorities, but it only took the British four months to remove him from office after they assumed control of the city. Apparently they hadn't appreciated the way he considered Germans their equals.)

Just a few years after his renewed fall from office he was appointed by the Bundestag as chancellor to Germany - by a majority of only one vote. He kept the office for fourteen years, founding the Bundeswehr (German army), bringing Germany into NATO, and bringing about the Élysée Treaty between West Germany and France. He was much criticized for refusing to even attempt unification between East and West Germany, believing that a strong, democratic West Germany allied with Western powers would act as a sort of magnet that would bring down the East German regime without the to him distasteful need to deal with the Soviet Union. He called his policy "Politik der Stärke" - Policy of Strength.

He is remembered as one of Germany's greatest Chancellors - indeed, in 2003 he was voted the "greatest German of all time" in a contest by the television broadcaster ZDF, for which more than three million votes were cast.